Transporting coolers, picnic baskets, blankets, recreational items, and lawn chairs from a parking lot to a recreation site can be an arduous task, sometimes requiring multiple trips to move all of the necessary supplies. To ease and expedite this process, chairs with wheels have been developed that can be alternately be used as carts to haul all of the gear to the recreation site in one trip.
U.S. Pat. 4,376,547 to Dominko teaches that a folding rachet-type lounge chair can be converted into a hand cart that can be used to transport articles. This type of chair has three seat sections, two end sections and a center section. Each section is joined to an adjacent section with a racheting hinge that allows the angle between two adjacent sections to be adjusted between zero and 180 degrees. A folding leg assembly is attached at each hinged joint.
In order to convert the lounge chair into a hand cart, one end section is folded flat against the center section while the other end section is fully extended for use as a handle. Near the hinge, a pair of wheel assemblies are each clamped onto the tubular frames of the two chair sections which have been folded flat against each other. To support the cargo, the leg assembly nearest the attached wheel assemblies is folded out to project in a direction opposite the direction that the wheel assemblies project. With the conversion complete, the chair is similar in resemblance and function to a hand dolly.
To revert the hand cart to a chair, the wheel assemblies' clamps must be loosened and then the assemblies moved from the tubular seat section frames to the tubular leg assembly which had served to support the cargo. There the wheel assemblies are positioned in the plane of the leg assembly, and the clamps retightened to secure the assemblies to the legs.
The design for a lounge chair convertible to a hand cart has some disadvantages. The processes to convert between a hand cart and a chair are time-consuming and complex. Additionally, the leg assembly which supports the cargo has a large void between the leg members through which smaller items could conceivably fall to the ground.
There have been several patents teaching the idea of a portable chair with wheels. Some of these patents disclose unusual chair designs that have rolling gear and cargo bearing structures integrated into the chairs themselves rather than attaching wheels to existing chairs. Other patents discuss ideas for permanently affixing wheels to existing chairs rather than removably attaching wheels to existing chairs.